It was March 2016. CIVILIZATION was riding high on our biggest hit thus far, Pepsi’s “Monkey King Family”, which had racked up almost 250 million views during the Chinese New Year period (it now stands at over 830 million views and counting). We had just moved to spanking new premises, with the intention of reaching a staff strength of about 100 in the upcoming months on the back of new account wins. I was also the doting father of an 8-month-old baby boy.
But little did I know I was about to enter a period of melancholia, punctuated by bouts of depression, that would last more than two years. How did this happen? And how did I claw my way out of the darkness?
I believe the extremes of anxiety and ennui that plague a lot of us are symptoms of modern urban living, particularly its preponderance of solitude and self-dependence. For an entrepreneur living alone in Shanghai, solitude and self-dependence come in spades.
As I got mired in the nerve-racking, backbreaking work of trying to build an agency and by the time it took on a life of its own, I was in danger of losing connection with the place it was thriving in, the people I was building it with, and the purpose it was serving. But just like how the work threw me into the abyss, the work found a way of leading me back into the light.
Here’s a chronological look at my journey, into the darkest cave and back, through the lens of the work that was created while journeying, and my attempts to stay connected throughout.
SEDRIN BEER “THANK YOU BROTHER”, 2015
Click here to watch “THANK YOU BROTHER”
If there was sunshine before the storm, this would be it. This was the first film I directed at CIVILIZATION, in all 4 protagonists I saw the friends I wished I had, and in them I also saw the friend that I hoped I could be.
Place: My dad was born in a small seaside city in Fujian. Like the protagonists in this film, he must’ve dreamed about life in the big city.
People: In portraying the lonely struggles of the those who moved to the big city to pursue their dreams, I borrowed heavily from my own life and the lives of those who chose to tell me their stories of trying to “make it” in Shanghai or Beijing or Guangzhou.
Purpose: I wanted to prove I could be a film director.
PEPSI “MONKEY KING FAMILY”, 2016
Click here to watch “MONKEY KING FAMILY”
Thank goodness for Danielle Jin (the client), Miya Wang (the writer), Alex Xie (my business partner) and Didi Xu (the producer/editor), four proud Shanghainese who pulled out all the stops to help make this happen.
Place: Another place in time. I saw one’s personal struggle in the context of every other individual’s struggle throughout history. Our pain may be ours, but it is not unique.
People: I came to realise for all my time spent working in China, there was still so much below the waterline of the cultural iceberg that was unknown to me.
Purpose: Everybody, including me, believed we had turned a big corner when this became such a success. We felt hope, but some part of me feared we would be pigeonholed by it.
LAY’S “A MOMENT IN TIME”, 2016
Click here to watch “A MOMENT IN TIME”
Following almost immediately after “Monkey King Family”, this was an incredibly personal project. The client trusted us so much that she didn’t ask to see the final draft of the script, which I only finished two nights before the shoot. The celebrity took it as seriously as she would a feature film. Even cloudy English skies opened up for god-light as if on cue.
Place: I wanted to get as far away from urban Shanghai as possible. Shooting in the Somerset countryside really gave me time to reflect on where my life and work were headed.
People: Movie star Amber Guo was born on the same day as me. I remember the first morning of our shoot, two of us stood at one end of a small path. As I gazed at my faraway cinematographer setting up at the other end, I said, “I wrote this for you.” She replied, “I know.” After the film’s premiere at a press conference a month later, she sent me a simple thank you note with our birthday written on it. She knew I borrowed her story to tell mine. We are not alone in this world.
Purpose: I wrote the script. Directed it. Composed and wrote most of the music and all of the lyrics. Yup, I was gonna’ be a director.
ALIBABA TRAVEL “FLY”, 2016
I saw his story on CNN and called our clients, Chris Tung and Andrew Yang, and sold the script in ten minutes. Kudos to their courage! The song was written during an alcohol-soaked stupor in a rundown inn on the border of Guangdong and Hunan. The lyrics were inspired by the protagonist’s poems.
Place: We had fog. We had a typhoon. We had near-freezing waterfalls. We had frozen tundra. And we, cast and crew, were connected to them in the most intimate ways possible. (The only thing we didn’t have was Aurora Borealis in cloud-ridden Finland . We added that in post-production.)
People: Not a single person in the crew or cast argued or complained throughout the shoot. How could we?
Purpose: Let’s shoot something that has a purpose.
PEPSI “RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW”, 2017
Click here to watch “RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW”
Cynical marketers and agency folk like to say, consumers don’t care about brands anymore. To which I naively reply, maybe we haven’t given them something to care about. This film started as a brief for a “consumer insights video”. It certainly didn’t end up that way did it?
Place: Does it even matter where we are? Wherever we are, aren’t we suppose to make that place mean something more?
People: With the exception of the director, the people who made this film, the clients, the agency, the crew, the post-production team, all of them actually lived through these stories we recreated.
Purpose: Yes, brands can matter.
LAY’S “IN PURSUIT”, 2017/2018
Click here to watch “IN PURSUIT”
In almost every mainstream movie, there is an “all is lost” moment just before breaking into the third act. This film probably represented mine. I came back from a long break in Spain and Portugal to a Shanghai I wasn’t sure I felt a part of (I missed my family), to a large staff half of whose names I didn’t know, and I was still shooting commercials instead of working on my feature film. I had lost connection with place, people and purpose. After completing this film, I realise they were not the problem, I was.
Place: I was lost.
People: I was lost.
Purpose: I was lost.
MASTER KONG JASMINE TEA, 2018
“ON THE ROAD WITH YOU” & “A SONG FOR THE LEAVING
Click here to watch “ON THE ROAD WITH YOU”
Click here to watch “A SONG FOR THE LEAVING”
We always overestimate what we can do in one year, and underestimate what we can do in three. I preach that, but sometimes I neglect the sermon. These two films brought me home.
Place: Wherever I am, that’s where I’m supposed to be.
People: If you connect with me, I’ll connect with you. If you don’t care to, there’s nothing I can do about that.
Purpose: I am here to tell stories that will hopefully make the world a better place to live in.
That’s about it. I’m wrapping up this essay alone at 2:19AM on a Tuesday. But I don’t feel alone at all. Maybe it’s because you’re reading this.
How to Create a Civilization in China 